"It's… ten minutes past eleven."
"No," contradicted Stannard. He smiled and coughed out of cigar-smoke. "I examined your watch today. It's something over ten minutes fast Now do you see why I was so badly caught?"
Martin, reconstructing last night, saw himself hauling down a heavy paper-bale to sit on: that was just after the vigil began. He remembered looking at the luminous figures of his watch, and thinking Stannard's own watch must be fast because it was well past twelve. But — Stannard was right — his watch must have been fast
"Stan, you mustn't keep thinking about it!" urged Ruth.
"But I was never more controlled!" said Stannard. "Would you believe, Inspector, that in my brick corner I alternately dozed and woke up, and dozed and woke up? In darkness the — the poor girl beside me seemed to my imagination worse than she had looked in light The quiet, the damned quiet! And the influences of people who'd dropped there!
"Presently I waked from my doze. My lamp had gone out on the floor above me; but there was a dim kind of grey from the two little windows up above. I kept my eyes on my wrist-watch; it said thirteen minutes to four. Before going down there I had opened the door of the execution shed a little way — you remember?"
"Yes. I remember," Martin said grimly.
"So that Drake would be sure to hear. Thirteen minutes to go. Then…
"Then Drake's voice cried, 'Stannard! Stannard! Are you all right?' Bracing myself for those last extra minutes, I was completely off balance. I managed to croak out 'I'm here. I'm—' Whereupon he said the time was up, and he was opening the iron door. I heard the door open, and the key clatter inside. Then he said something about entertaining evening, and he was free and so was I’
1 was paralyzed. I could not utter a word. Such is the nature of an unexpected voice. Then, since he seemed to be going away…"